music

I came to philosophy through music.

One day, my orchestra was working on a rhythmically challenging piece, and to keep them on track, I became a human metronome on the snare drum. And to keep me on track, I had a light-based metronome in front of me, a moving dot traversing from one end of a line to the other signaling each beat.

Then I had this trippy experience where depending on what the orchestra was playing, the dot’s movement would speed up or slow down! The happy coincidence of reading Augustine’s Confessions shortly afterwards (ugh, book XI is so good) got me hooked on philosophy of time.

I dropped my economics major and picked up philosophy… and now I like to say that I do “applied philosophy of time” on the drums!

I performed with my jazz combo* throughout my PhD. We played original music and arranged standards in fun ways (like a Reggae “Misty” and an Afro-Cuban “Belle”!)

In Tucson, you might catch me jamming on the weekends at The Century Room!

*Thanks to “Confused Goose and the Rage Guys” (Diana Rypkema, Quinten Stedman, Sarah Woodward, and Geoff McConohy) for the recordings, permission, and memories.